Lileks reports on his search for a rare replacement part for his stove.

He explained why he had the part: Thermidor didn’t make it, of course. Someone else did. This company used the same design for another company, and they still made the part. He was the only guy who’d figured this out, so he made a tidy profit on Thermidor’s clocks going out after ten years.

Which they always did. “What’s the guy who finishes last in his engineering class going to do?” he said. “He’s going to design appliance parts. So the board, the 486752, gets too much voltage [I’m paraphrasing] and the light dims after ten years of use.” I noted that the light on our panel dimmed after ten years of use. He said this usually meant the board would follow soon. Hence the number of calls he gets.

He had some choice words for Wheezy as well, noting that his description of “F1” as a “Stuck Key” indicated that “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Said with the offhand, casual pleasure of one engineer peeing on another.